Nurses teach colleagues about end-of-life care

Madeline Lambrecht has long taught UD nursing students how to provide better care to dying patients. Now, she's extending those educational efforts to nurses throughout the state of Delaware.

Lambrecht, who is director of the CHNS Division of Special Programs and a professor of nursing, is one of five Delaware nurse educators certified by the national End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) to lead a professional development program known as "Train the Trainer." The program's curriculum, presented in three daylong sessions, covers such topics as pain management, communication skills, nursing care at the end of life, ethical and legal considerations, symptom management and issues involving grief, loss and bereavement.

Last fall, Lambrecht and Delaware's four other ELNEC-certified nurse educators conducted the state's first three-day program, attended by 48 nurses.

"Many who attended were staff educators, who will go back to their agencies to disseminate the information there," Lambrecht says. "The bottom line is to provide better end-of-life care. That's what we all want, and, especially when you consider the aging population, you can see the increasing need for it."

ELNEC began in February 2000 with the help of a major grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In Delaware, the "Train the Trainer" course was cosponsored by UD, the Delaware End-of-Life Coalition, Delaware Nurses Association and Delaware Hospice.